Tent & Tree
Destinations / Yosemite
Upper Pines Campground
The largest Yosemite Valley campground, open year-round. Walking distance to Half Dome trailheads and Curry Village.
1 person is watching this campground right now.
Getting a site here
- Open (2026, tentative)
- All year
- Elevation
- 4,000 ft
- Sites
- 236
- Fee
- $36/night
- Water
- Tap
- RV / trailer max
- 35 ft / 24 ft
- Reservations
- 5 months ahead on the 15th
From the National Park Service's campground table, checked 2026-09-23. The only Yosemite campground on reservations all year. Dump station on site.
When does your date go on sale at Upper Pines? The Yosemite release calendar →
Popular weekends here book up soon after they open on Recreation.gov. After that, the realistic path is cancellations.
Cancellations we've caught here
In the last 30 days, 2526 booked site-nights at Upper Pines came back up (323 of them Friday or Saturday nights). Of the 2288 that someone rebooked, at least half were gone within 80 minutes, and 906 within an hour.
Latest:
- Wed Oct 28 · Site 104 · opened Sat 8:56 PM PT, rebooked within 46 min
- Thu Oct 29 · Site 191 · opened Sat 8:56 PM PT, rebooked within 165 min
- Mon Oct 26 · Site 162 · opened Sat 8:56 PM PT, rebooked within 46 min
- Tue Oct 27 · Site 162 · opened Sat 8:56 PM PT, rebooked within 165 min
- Wed Oct 28 · Site 162 · opened Sat 8:56 PM PT, rebooked within 46 min
- Thu Oct 29 · Site 162 · opened Sat 8:56 PM PT, rebooked within 46 min
From our own checks of every site here, lately about every 15 minutes for nights this month and next, less often further out. A site that opens and is rebooked between two checks isn't counted, so these are floors, and each time is a bound. Cancellations at every campground we log →
The 7am release here
Arrivals on Monday, February 15, 2027 through March 14 went on sale at 7am Pacific on Thursday, October 15. 369 of its 2446 site-nights were already reserved, by stays that started on an earlier night. Of the 2077 site-nights that went on sale, 987 were still open at our 10:00 AM read.
111 site-nights came back on sale after the rush: 1,063 were taken at our 7:15 read, 952 at 7:30. Recreation.gov locks a site in your cart for 15 minutes and releases it if checkout isn't finished, so the 7:00 carts nobody paid for go back on sale from about 7:15. Missed it at 7:00? Look again at 7:15, or let a watch on your dates tell you the moment one comes back.
From our own reads just before 7:00 and through the morning; each time is when we looked. Every campground's release →
Upper Pines Campground cancellation policy
Cancel more than 48 hours before your arrival date and you lose only the $10 fee; inside 48 hours you also lose the first night. The campground's own rule, as Recreation.gov publishes it:
Cancellations more than 48 hours in advance of arrival date only incur a $10 transaction fee. Within 48 hours, $10 and the first night's fee are charged (Exception: 1 night reservations do not incur an additional $10 fee, but do not receive a refund). No-shows will be assessed a $20 service fee along with the loss of the first night's fee.
From Upper Pines's Recreation.gov page, read Sep 30, 2026. How cancellations work, and how far ahead the cancelled nights are →
Set an alert for your dates and we check every site in Upper Pines every 30 seconds. When one opens, you get an email with a direct link to the site and night — you book it yourself, in your own Recreation.gov account.
Read before you book
- How Recreation.gov cancellations actually work (and when sold-out sites open up) — Sold out on Recreation.gov rarely means sold out for good. The fee rules decide when people cancel, and knowing them tells you when to look.